Welcome to Transfigurations! This blog is intended to serve the orthodox Anglican community and the wider Christian community. We pray that all that is posted here will be faithful to the Scriptures as the inspired word of God, speak the truth in love, edify, bless and transform this local body of Christ, and be an impetus for revival, repentance, prayer and intercession!

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

New Planned Parenthood video claims fetal parts were used without consent ...The latest video from The Center for Medical Progress featured an interview with a former lab technician, whose company partnered with Planned Parenthood. The woman, who described herself as an “ex-procurement technician,” claimed that her co-workers sometimes did not seek a woman’s consent before obtaining aborted fetus tissue to be used for medical research.

“There were times when they would just take what they wanted, and these mothers don’t know,” the former employee, Holly O’Donnell, said in the 10-minute video.

The anti-abortion group’s weeks-long campaign against Planned Parenthood has been defined by its secretly recorded footage, which included graphic images of the medical workers handling aborted fetus parts in Petri dishes...

The Real Story of the Summer
...What the Planned Parenthood videos have revealed about liberal elites and the dynamics of American politics is extraordinary. Outside of those who consume conservative media, Americans are more likely to have heard of Cecil, the dead Zimbabwe lion, than of the videos. Those who have heard of both stories know more about Cecil's last moments than about fetuses having their brains destroyed so that their organs—their human organs—could be sold.

The July 30th NBC Nightly News report on the Planned Parenthood videos was, in its own way, a beautiful example of how properly motivated journalists can make an inherently interesting subject incomprehensible and irritating. Imagine if a network had covered Romney's infamous (surreptitiously taped) 47 percent remarks by never quoting Romney, including clips of a hostile interview with the journalists who released the Romney tape, and then had ended the report with the suggestion that the attacks on Romney could lead to declining business investment and job growth...

How Pro-Choice Women Undermine Feminism ...What else is selective abortion but a way to reserve the right to end a life because women need protection from their decisions? These same women who proclaim themselves as in need of being bailed out of consequences resulting from their own agency are asking for the right to eliminate another’s life. As if they are too weak of a gender to manage another 20 weeks of pregnancy to ensure the baby can go to someone who will love it, if they cannot. A desire to be seen as powerful and strong cannot stand as long as women continually prove themselves too fearful of their own biology...

At least 47 dead in market bomb blast in NE Nigeria ...The explosion ripped through the weekly market in the village of Sabon Gari, around 135 kilometres (85 miles) south of Borno state capital Maiduguri, during peak trading around 1:15 pm (1230 GMT), the sources said.

"We have received at least 47 dead bodies and at least 50 with injuries from the Sabon Gari market, where there was a blast this afternoon," a nurse at Biu General Hospital, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) away, told AFP...

Jesus Suffers with Us—and We with Him ...First, even during the darkest patch, when we feel forsaken by God, he is, in fact, present—as the Psalms and the cross reveal to us. If we share in the fullness of Christ’s life, we at times will feel Godforsaken. And in those moments we know something beyond our feelings: that God is present mysteriously at the moment he seems most absent. Furthermore, just as Christ saw light—the fruit of his suffering, salvation for others—as he was still suffering, so we have hope in the midst of our suffering, knowing that God will work all things together for our good (Rom. 8:28).

Second, all our sufferings are significant. The twists and turns of life aren’t obstacles to God’s plan for our lives but necessary steps to get there. God uses our sufferings that we might share in the life of Christ. As Paul put it, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:10–11, NIV).

Suffering is not something we want to avoid. Rather, like Paul, we want to pass through it, for it is a key means of experiencing deeper union with Christ...